


i can almost feel your breath

by notquitepunkrock



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, I tried so hard to leave out the angst but i have no control over myself anymore, Inspired By Tumblr, Liz goes to MIT, M/M, Meet-Cute, Ned has a big family bc I have a big family, Pre-Relationship, Soft Boys, i think Ned Peter Shuri and MJ go to NYU but who knows tbh, its cute fluffy trAsh, yeah yeah yall get it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 17:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14383518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquitepunkrock/pseuds/notquitepunkrock
Summary: “You see me climbing onto the ledge of my window on the fourth floor and immediately go to stop me from doing something stupid but oops actually my internet company is messing up and this is the only place my wifi works i'm not afraid of heights do you need to lie down you look sick”prompt from tumblr





	i can almost feel your breath

**Author's Note:**

> this is in my docs as "the infamous freaking spiderman fic" because I didn't know MIT was in massachusetts until this fic and my friend will never let me live it down. so yeah thats a thing.
> 
> the title is from Touch by Troye Sivan from his first ep TRXYE which brings back so many freaking memories and also was one of the first gay love songs i'd ever heard. sorry if they're OOC i can only write lesbians correctly because i am one and FEELINGS
> 
> i have no idea what this is im sorry

Ned looked up from his laptop, eyes widening when the kid in the dorm right across the small alley from his room climbing onto the window ledge. This could not be happening, not on midterm week. Ned refused to bear witness to some poor kid’s desperate attempt to escape midterms while was in the middle of studying for his own exams.

His eyes flickered between the kid perched on his window ledge and the fire escape just outside of his own window. There was a way to stop him.

He nearly fell over in his hurry to stand up, throwing open his window. “Dude! What the heck?” he called, not actually thinking about the fact that if this kid was startled he might fall on accident anyway.

The kid didn’t seem to react, looking up at Ned calmly and - oh. Well. His eyes were really pretty, weren’t they? Ned shook himself, clambering out the window and onto the flimsy metal fire escape. He screwed his eyes shut for a moment as he got his bearings, then opened them to stare at the skinny short kid who was… just hanging out in his window? What?

“Hi, I’m Peter,” he said calmly, offering a wave. “I’d shake your hand, but I think our walls are a bit too far apart.” As if to illustrate, he stretched his legs, wiggling them in the air. They didn’t even reach the fire escape, despite how close the two buildings were.

“H-Hi Peter,” Ned managed. Looking at Peter’s legs was a mistake, because just past his legs in his line of vision was the ground, and holy  _ crap _ , four stories was a lot higher up than he’d thought. Ned felt his stomach flip. He kind of thought he was going to be sick. “I’m Ned. Are-Are you alright?”

Peter glanced up, frowning. “What? Yeah, I’m fine, except my friend MJ is kicking my ass at Words with Friends. Why?”

Ned’s head was spinning. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and forced himself to breathe normally. How the hell was Peter just casually  _ sitting _ on his  _ window ledge _ this high up? He didn’t understand it. “I-I saw you climb out the window, and with all the midterm stress… I didn’t want you do do anything, like, stupid,” Ned said. He closed his eyes tightly, one hand gripping the railing of the rickety fire escape so hard his knuckles were turning white. Wow, great first impression, Ned. Good job, really.

“What? Oh my God, no!” Peter said quickly. He shook his head so quickly Ned was surprised the force didn’t send him to the ground. “No, the wifi in my dorm sucks, this is the only place I get decent signal, and I think it’s  _ technically _ yours? Anyway, I’m almost out of data and I can’t afford to pay my Aunt May back again this month and - hey, dude, are you okay? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

Ned swallowed hard. His head was spinning and he wasn’t sure if it was the height, or the boy’s rapidfire rambling that was making him dizzy. “I’m fine I just… don’t like heights?” 

Peter’s eyes widened. He stuffed his phone into his pocket and, in show of daring that literally made Ned’s heart stop, he carefully jumped out of the window and caught hold of the fire escape Ned was standing on. The structure shook with his weight, and Ned groaned loudly, biting hard on his lower lip. Oh God, oh God, oh God, he was going to die here, he didn’t even get to graduate from college before dying how lame was that, oh  _ God _ .

Someone was talking quietly to him, coaching him on where to move his legs, and Ned opened his eyes to find that somehow, Peter had managed to maneuver him back inside his dorm and settle him on his bed. Ned’s heart stopped racing quite so quickly, though his hands were still balled into tight fists. Peter was sitting beside him, rubbing circles on his back and muttering what sounded like that Periodic Table Song that Ned had memorized for extra credit in seventh grade. Ned resisted an urge to smile because, hey, that was kind of cute.

“I’m good, now,” Ned said, once he finally got his breath back. Peter stopped singing, but his hand stayed on the other boy’s back. “Thanks. Sorry. I almost died in an elevator once. Heights have freaked me out ever since.”

“You must have been pretty worried to come out onto the fire escape anyway, then,” Peter observed. Ned ducked his head to hide a blush, but the shorter boy kept on talking. “Good thing I’m… well, you could say I do parkour. Otherwise you would have been stuck there panicking, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good.”

Ned looked up in interest at his hesitation. His heart jumped when he realized just how close to Peter’s face he was. “Peter Parker does parkour?” he stammered, immediately regretting the words as they left his mouth. Peter leaned back, and Ned was sure he was about to spit some slightly disgusted comment about how much of loser Ned was and make his way back to his bedroom. He braced himself for impact, but was startled when instead Peter tossesd his head back and laughed.

In fact, he didn’t stop laughing for what seemed like a very long time. Ned was starting to think he was going to laugh himself to death. (Was that even possible? Ned didn’t know. He was an engineering and computer science guy. Not a biomedical student. That was Liz.)

(Oh, right. Liz. God, she was going to have a field day when she heard about this. He couldn’t let her hear about this.)

When Peter finally stopped laughing, his phone dinged with a notification. He glanced at it and grimaced. “I have to meet my friends at the cafe in like, ten minutes. See you later?” 

Everything in Ned was screaming at him to not meet up again with the weirdly attractive boy who hung out in window ledges for fun. Nothing good could come from that. And yet, he found himself nodding and saying, “later,” in a firm tone and before he could process the smile that lit up Peter’s face, the kid was climbing back out the window.

Well then. Ned was officially fucked.

 

There was a loud crash in the middle of the night two weeks later. Ned shot upright, blearily raising a t-ball bat that his little sister had given to him before he moved out towards the noise. He slowly blinked the sleep out of his eyes to find the top half of his Lego model of Stark Tower on the floor in pieces. Peter had one leg through the window, his face frozen in a horrified wince.

“Peter?” he groaned, dropping the bat onto his bed and rubbing at his eyes. “What are you doing here? It’s,” he yawned, peering at his alarm clock glowing in the darkness, “two in the morning.”

Peter laughed nervously, slowly sliding the rest of the way into the window. “I couldn’t sleep,” he admitted. “I saw your window was cracked and didn’t really think about it before coming over. I’m sorry about your model. I can fix it!” The last part was hurried out, his voice thick with guilt and maybe something else.

Ned waved him off and leaned over to turn on his lamp. “It’s fine,” he said around another yawn. “I can remake it. Tiny Tony Stark can deal with the mess for a couple more days.”

In the sudden light, Ned was able to make out Peter’s face. He had thick rimmed glasses, which he hadn’t been wearing the first time they’d met and his hair was tousled, like he’d spent the night tossing and turning. His eyes were also ringed with red and bloodshot. Ned wasn’t an expert in Peter, but he was an expert in his sisters and in Liz and he knew that red, blood-shot eyes meant two things - either Peter was high, or he’d been crying.

Peter was halfway back out the window before Ned realized he should talk to him. “Hey, wait, are you okay?” he called. Peter froze, his shoulders tense.

“It’s nothing, I’ll be fine. Sorry to wake you,” Peter called softly over his shoulder. Ned rolled his eyes and heaved himself out of bed grabbing Peter around the waist and pulling him back inside. Ned wasn’t particularly muscular, but he was easily twice the other boy’s size and Peter didn’t weigh much. It didn’t take any effort to pull him back and deposit him on Ned’s bed.

He shut the window pointedly and turned back to look at Peter. In the two weeks since Peter had first climbed through his window, Ned hadn’t seen him too much. He’d let the other boy add him on Facebook so they could play each other Words With Friends and Trivia Crack, and they’d had a few short conversations through their windows and when they ran into each other on campus, but Ned wasn’t even entirely sure Peter considered him a friend.

(And yet, somehow he’d managed to fall entirely in love with Peter-fucking-Parker. Enough that his stomach roiled with jealousy every time he mentioned MJ, his ex-turned-best-friend, and Shuri, who Ned was convinced he had a crush on. Enough that, unfortunately, Liz and his sister had both picked up on it, and were constantly trying to get details of his newfound crush out of him. Not that Ned was telling. He knew better than that.)

“What’s wrong Peter?” Ned asked after Peter stopped looking like he was ready to die of embarrassment from being manhandled. He sat down at the foot of the bed, far enough away that Peter could ignore him, but close enough that he could give a hug if asked. And to be honest, Peter really looked like he needed a hug.

There was a long silence, and Ned was ready to change the subject when Peter finally started talking. “I’m from here in town. Queens, really, but New York City. I lost my parents really young in an accident and moved in with my aunt and uncle.” He paused, took a deep breath, and continued. “My uncle died in an accident, and I got… hurt. And then The Battle of New York happened.”

Ned sucked in a breath. He remembered seeing the alien battle on the news, remembered the aftermath and everything that had happened in the following years. He’d lived in Oregon all his life, far away from any of the fighting, but even from there it had been terrifying. He couldn’t imagine living in New York and seeing it all face to face.

“That wasn’t anywhere near Queens, but it was scary. And I was in a few… a few jams after that because of the effects, you know? It was a lot. It was too much, I was too young, I-” Peter cut himself off, wiping at his feyes furiously. Ned realized with a start that he’d started crying again. He looked so utterly broken, and that was the worst part. Ned had no idea what had happened to break Peter like that, but he wanted to go back in time and punch whatever it was in the face.

They were quiet for a few moments. Peter was curled in on himself, his knees pulled to his chest as he tried to calm himself down, and Ned let him. When the boy’s head finally reappeared from buried in his knees, Ned spoke.

“My friend Liz moved to Oregon in the middle of sophomore year,” he started. “She became friends with my half-sister - Anna, the one who’s my age. One night she was sleeping over and I woke up in the middle of the night to get water and she was crying in the kitchen. That’s when we became friends.” It was hard to talk about Liz’s story, especially without her. Every time he did, Ned wanted nothing more than to hug his best friend. But she was all the way at MIT, and there was nothing he could do.

He found a spot on the wall next to one of his old game posters, staring so hard he was sure he’d burn a hole through it if he had laser vision. “Her dad was a bad man. Not just bad, like a criminal. And he finally got caught, and arrested, and got three life sentences. She and her mom moved to start a new life away from that, and they didn’t even know until he got caught but that kind of thing screws you up. Sometimes, people hear her last name and treat her like shit for it. Hell, she met Tony Stark once and he hardened up immediately after she introduced herself. She’s way too young for that, you know? I don’t get it, but I do understand.” 

“Is your friend okay now?” Peter asked quietly. 

Ned shrugged. “Sometimes she is,” he said. “But sometimes she has nightmares. Or she can’t sleep, and then she calls me or Anna or both of us and we talk about it or we don’t. Whatever helps. Same thing goes for me when I have nightmares about that freaking elevator.” He let out a soft, sarcastic chuckle, and his friend let a ghost of a smile cross his face for a moment.

Peter nodded. “I think I’d like to stop talking about it,” he said, even quieter this time. Ned moved to the floor, carefully pulling the bottom half of Stark Tower off of the shelf under his window.

“Then come help me out with this, Captain Destruct-o,” he teased, carefully sorting out the pieces. Peter joined him slowly on the floor, laughing a little.

“Captain Destructo?”

“Yeah, man, it’s like your superhero alter-ego,” he explained. “Your power is destroying everything.” 

A small, cheeky grin crossed Peter’s face. He held up a tiny Lego Spider-Man. “I think I’d just be Spider-Man,” he said. 

Ned rolled his eyes. “As if. Get like, a million times more badass, then we’ll talk.”

Peter broke into peals of laughter that made Ned grateful he lived in a single. If he had a roommate, they definitely would’ve been woken up by that, if they weren’t awake already. “But I  _ am _ Spider-Man!” Peter announced through his laughter. Ned shook his head and continued to work on the decimated tower, ignoring the arguments Peter sent him.

He was glad Peter was feeling better. Smiling was a good look for him.

 

The pair didn’t talk about that night again, though Peter had started coming over a lot more often. Ned woke up several times to find Peter passed out on the floor of his dorm with the window open, and occasionally the other boy would shake him awake and they’d work on a Lego project until whatever was bothering Peter disappeared into the recesses of his mind. They’d taken to squeezing together on Ned’s bed on those nights, and would wake up in a pile of limbs and sweaty foreheads and drool spots on each other’s shirts, but Ned tried not to think too much into that.

They didn’t just hang out in the middle of the night. Sometimes, they’d meet up at the coffee shop or go get pizza with MJ and Shuri - who was the  _ actual princess of Wakanda _ and Ned was even more sure Peter had a crush on her than before, and honestly, there was no way that Ned could even begin to compete with that. And sometimes, Peter would climb through Ned’s window in between class and his “internship” that Ned was starting to think was definitely not an internship just to hang out.

It was nice, but none of it really helped the pining situation. Which, whatever. Ned could deal.

Ned was on Skype with Liz when he finally told her and Anna about Peter. Or, well, he didn’t tell her so much as Peter dropped by in the middle of their conversation. 

As usual, Ned was alerted to Peter’s arrival by the sound of his window sliding open. (He’d taken to leaving it cracked on days when it wasn’t raining, just in case. Rainy days were, in fact, the only time they hung out in Peter’s room. Ned didn’t know why. It was just cozier there.) He turned around in his desk chair, ignoring Liz as she talked about how much she hated the last biology lecture she’d attended in favor of raising an eyebrow at Peter’s grinning face.

“Do you even know how to use a door?” he asked as Peter shed his coat. The other boy dropped onto Ned’s bed and grabbed the box of Cheez-Its from the night stand.

“Yeah, but my way is more fun,” he said before shoving a handful of them into his mouth.

“Who’s that?” Liz asked, eyes wide. 

Ned turned back to the screen with a grimace. Well, this could go one of two ways. “That’s Peter. He’s my friend.”

Anna’s head popped up over Liz’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, did my brother just say he has a  _ friend _ ?” she gasped. “And it’s not someone I met first? Sound the alarms, he’s been bodysnatched!” Ned groaned, and Peter started chuckling. He shot a glare over his shoulder, which was met by a mischievous grin.

Ned’s worst fears were realized when Peter got up, wrapping on arm around Ned from behind and leaning towards the screen. Ned’s heart definitely did not stop racing from the contact. “Hi, you must be Liz and Anna!” he chirped. “Neddy’s told me so much about you! You should see the way he lights up - it’s adorable.” 

He ruffled Ned’s hair as Anna’s eyes widened so much they almost popped out of her skull. “I’ll wait for you in the hall, I want to surprise MJ with a pizza while she studies,” he added. He left through the door - surprising in itself. The second the door closed behind him, Anna disappeared out of frame, presumably falling to the floor if the sound of her laughter was anything to go by. Ned scowled. Suddenly, he really wished that Anna didn’t take the nine hour drive from Pittsburgh to MIT every other weekend to see Liz. 

“So he was definitely into you,” Liz said with a grin. “Assuming that’s the guy you keep reblogging all that pining nonsense about on Tumblr. I say go for it, and also ignore Anna.”

Ned’s face was bright red. “He’s not normally like that,” he said quickly, his voice high. God damn embarrassment, messing up his voice. “He was making fun of me.”

“There was truth in it,” Liz said knowingly. Ned shook his head and she rolled her eyes. Anna was still laughing in the background, but after living with with her for thirteen of his nineteen years, Ned had learned to tune it out. “You’re a loser,” she added. “Go have fun, nerd. I’ll talk to you on Wednesday.”

Liz ended the call before Ned could protest.

When Ned joined Peter in the hall, his friend grinned up at him. A lock of his dark hair fell into his eyes and Ned resisted the urge to shove it out of his face. “Aw, are you into Liz?” Peter asked teasingly. Ned groaned, dodging the elbow Peter aimed at his ribs. “Look at that blush!”

“Shut up Pete,” he muttered. Peter laughed and threw an arm around his shoulders. He ruffled his hair again. 

“You’re adorable, Leeds, you know that” he said. And then he took off laughing down the hallway towards the stairwell before Ned had time to process what he’d said. Ned rolled his eyes and jogged after him.

Peter Parker was going to be the death of him. Strangely enough, Ned was okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> !! thank you for reading!! comments and kudos give me life xx  
>  come yell at me on tumblr if you want @ over-the-moony-for-padfoot


End file.
